Library Navigation Elements
There are several layout elements available to help you filter, search, or navigate your library in various ways. Any one of them will work fine on its own, and they can also be combined. Jump Bar The jump bar can be displayed horizontally across the top of your library (as part of the panels header bar), or vertically down the left side of the library (configured in Panels Configuration). Clicking a letter will take you to that letter in the main panel, according to your first sort tag (i.e. if you're sorting by Album Artist/Year/Album and you click H it will take you to the first Album Artist starting with H). Right click on it to enable multi-character searches (clicking multiple letters within 3 seconds of each other will combine them: H-A-N would take you to the first Album Artist starting with HAN). Clicking on any other panel will interrupt a multi-character search even if it hasn't been 3 seconds. For date fields (Year or any other fields set to the Date type), the letters will be replaced by years. It will show the first year in the list, then break the rest down by decades (with single digits for years in between if there is room), and end with the last year in the list. Thumbnail Browser The thumbnail browser shows tag values in the vertical column at the left side of your library. It acts by filtering the main panel by the selected tag. If you have it set to Artist and you click on a particular artist, you will only be shown tracks on which that artist is tagged. There's a menu at the top left (in the panels header bar) where you can select which field you want to use, and also choose between small, medium, or large thumbnails. On a 96 DPI monitor, small is 40 px, medium is 53 px, and large is 66 px (scaled for higher DPI screens). For whatever field you set it to, the thumbnail browser will display one of these kinds of thumbnails: # Artist: Artist thumbnails are stored in a subfolder of your artist pictures location as configured in Tags (1). # Album: Uses album covers as configured in Tags (1). # Grouping: Uses images found in an subfolder of your MusicBee installation (you will need to configure this yourself: Installation Folder\Icons\Genre). #* You can find some images for genre on the Icons page. ;TIP: You can tag a track or tracks by dragging them to the thumbnail browser (or column browser). Wherever you drop them, those tracks will be tagged with that value (with a confirmation so you don't do it accidentally). Column Browser The Column Browser is the more utilitarian sibling of the Thumbnail Browser. There are no thumbnails, but it allows up to 6 columns for filtering the main panel and has no restrictions on which tags you can use. It can be displayed vertically like the thumbnail browser (with the option to stack columns or place them side-by-side), but by default the columns are displayed across the top of the main panel. You can select multiple items in a column by holding down Ctrl. Columns filter from left to right or top to bottom. If you change the selection in a column, all following columns will be reset, but earlier columns will not. You can reorder columns by dragging the column headers, and columns can be resized vertically and horizontally by dragging the edges. Right clicking in a column header will give you a small menu of options: Returns columns to equal size. Does NOT resize them relative to the main panel. Choose which columns to show. Automatically set columns based on one of the default or custom sorting sets. Will display the number of tracks for each item in the column lists. If track counts are shown, you can click above them in the column header to sort by count instead of by the field values. Library Explorer Like the thumbnail and column browsers, the Library Explorer filters your library, but it does so a little differently. If you're viewing the Music node or a filter, Library Explorer will filter the tracks in the main panel. If you're viewing another node or playlist, however, Library Explorer will still show the tracks in your main library or current filter. This is so that you can use it to do things like find and add tracks to playlists. Library Explorer uses a tree view. The top level of the tree can be any field. Album Art, Genre, Mood, and Occasion are configured by default, but you can add any others. For the lower tree "branches", you apply one of the default or custom sorting sets. So, for instance, if you had Category: Genre and Sort By: Album Artist \ Album, your tree would look somewhat like the picture at the right. The tree ends with a list of tracks matching your selections. The menu at the top left of the Library Explorer has a few relevant options. This is where you add or remove which categories (fields) are available. It works exactly like the "Set Displayed Fields..." selector used in many panels. This is where you choose the subfields in your tree. It looks exactly like the Sort By list used in the main panel and other places. If you tick this, the number of subfield entries will be displayed in parentheses next to each entry. For instance, if you have Genre Category / Genre as your "Sort By" and there are 12 genres in the genre category Rock, you would see "Rock (12)". Opens the Library Explorer search box. If your selection focus is already in the Library Explorer, you don't have to use this menu command - you can start typing and the search box appears. The first branch shown matching your query will be selected. Again thinking of Genre Category / Genre, you could type "Rock" to go to genre category Rock; if Alternative Rock is a genre within Rock, you would first need to toggle the Rock genre category in order for a search of "Alt" to find Alternative Rock. If there is more than one matching entry, you can use the Next button to cycle through them. To close the search box, click the X, press Esc on the keyboard, or untick this menu item.